Free Arthur Quinn and the World Serpent by Alan Early Page A

you to do some work. Will and Ash managed to do theirs. Why couldn’t you do yours?’
    â€˜Miss? I don’t know what you mean.’
    â€˜The essay, Arthur. Why didn’t you write an essay like everyone else in class?’
    â€˜But I did, Miss.’ And he had. He’d put a lot of work into that essay for the past couple of hours. He could even remember the last line about how the Metro would be great for tourism.
    â€˜Arthur, please. You spent two hours doodling.’ She held up his essay. His name was written on the top, like he remembered doing. And the first few lines of the essay were still intact. But after line five, his writing disintegrated into random lines, dots and cross-hatches. He took the pages from her and flicked through them, confused. Page after page was the same – an identical pattern repeated over and over in place of real letters.
    â€˜I can’t … I didn’t …’ He struggled to continue. He knew two things as he looked at the pages. First of all, he definitely hadn’t drawn these strange letters. He distinctly remembered writing the essay. But these were his pages, which just made him more confused.
    The second thing he knew was that he’d seen these letters before. Carved into the wall of the stone tunnel and written in blood in a dream. An ancient alphabet that he shouldn’t have, and couldn’t have, known. Something called runes.

    â€˜And what did you say to her?’ asked Ash. During break, Arthur had shown her and Will the pages. Will was currently studying them.
    â€˜I just apologised,’ Arthur answered. ‘I didn’t know what else to say. She’s letting me write the essay again for homework. I’m not worried about that, though. I’m worried that somebody must have swapped my essay for this.’
    â€˜You know what would be even worse, though?’ said Will, looking up from the pages. ‘That you did write this but you just can’t remember doing it.’
    â€˜That’s not possible,’ Arthur said, then looked to Ash for confirmation. ‘Is it?’
    She shrugged her shoulders doubtfully and, though Arthur didn’t want to admit it, he was doubtful too.

    Arthur didn’t finish rewriting his essay that night until after 10.30. Exhausted, he went straight to bed. Joe followed to his own bed less than an hour later.
    On the green outside, the dark figure emerged from the shadow of a tree and walked towards the Quinn household. Dead leaves crunched under his step while the breeze swept others around his ankles in mini typhoons.
    He stopped in the middle of the road. This was far enough. At this distance, he could sense the power of the pendant. He could even see it, glowing green through the boy’s window as he dreamed inside.
    The boy was protected now. Protected from him. Because of the pendant. Except it was more than a pendant. The man knew this. He knew what it really was. A key.

Chapter Nine

    If Arthur thought that things couldn’t get any stranger, he was in for a surprise the next day at school. Class was well under way. Miss Keegan had taken his new essay with thanks when he arrived in the door with Ash and Will, and on the board she was now going over some geography homework from a couple of days ago.
    As she droned on about mounds and fjords and glacial formations, Arthur found himself being distracted by a strange smell. At first he couldn’t tell what it was but as it grew stronger he found the smell in his memory. The air reeked of dampness and mildew, age and a faint whiff of open sewage. He’d smelled it before: under the ground, along the dank River Poddle. He looked at Ash and Will, but they didn’t seem to have noticed and were both paying close attention to Miss Keegan’s words on the blackboard. He looked at the teacher. Her mouth was moving and her hands gesturing yet suddenly he couldn’t hear a word that was coming out.